Orange (France Telecom) now offers free (i.e. zero-rated) access to Wikipedia for mobile data users in 20 countries. It's not perfect; users only get free access to the mobile version of the site which lacks the functionality required to contribute, however a vast archive of human knowledge is now significantly more accessible to tens of millions of people. Excellent news indeed!
Or, is it? While free Wikipedia for the masses might sound like a good idea, I argue that it does more harm than good; that it undermines one of the Internet's greatest long-term benefits to society: the level playing-field.
The Internet, by design, is decentralized and neutral; everyone on the network can connect directly to everyone else. Thus, the Internet allows anyone who uses it to quickly, cheaply, and easily experiment with new ideas, technologies, and business models at an extremely large scale. This is why Amazon was able to compete with Walmart from a home in Seattle; why Google was able to compete with Yahoo from a garage in California; and why Facebook was able to compete with MySpace from a dorm room at Harvard University.
Now, before I talk about how this all starts to break down when certain services are given preferential treatment, you need to understand how the Internet really works (watch the short video):
You also need to understand how the Internet is sold and why:
Internet service providers have traditionally sold customers all-you-can-eat monthly access plans differentiated by speed. Why? Because packets of data are not a very scarce resource. There's a nearly infinite supply as their entire life-cycle occurs within electronic devices. The only meaningful constraint is the transmission rate (i.e. the speed at which they can be sent and received).
Despite this, many Internet service providers have started charging customers not by the speed of their link, but for each individual packet of data they send or receive (i.e. data bundles). Why? Well, they say it's the only way to effectively manage bandwidth in this brave new world of bandwidth-hungry services and mobile devices. However, studies have shown this to be false.
What this new billing model most definitely does do is give Internet service providers the ability to interfere with everyone's ability to interconnect. For example, they can now charge more for some websites and less for others; offer sponsored data services; sell tiered access plans similar to television's Bronze, Silver, and Gold packages; or even offer free access to a related online businesses while charging for access to the competition.
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It's important to note that currently established content providers also have a strong interest in promoting this model. After all, if Facebook is free, who's going to pay to use the competition?
But don't just take my word for it; listen to Vint Cerf, inventor of the Internet:
Or Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web:
So, what does all of this mean for Uganda? We talk a lot about Internet penetration rates and World Bank statistics, but we don't talk a lot about what kind of Internet we're deploying. What hope do Ugandan entrepreneurs and innovators have if wealthy corporations are allowed to monopolize the Internet?
How will the next Wikipedia launch from Makerere, or the next Facebook from someone's pocket in Karamoja, if the Internet does not remain neutral?
This is an interesting perspective-I guess that the Internet even though it started if with altruistic goals has increasingly become 'capitalistic'. Which begs the oft unanswered question-who governs (I mean, really governs) the net?
ReplyDeleteWhat about the poor student who cannot afford internet. Getting free access to a knowledge base such as wikipedia can be very liberating. The S6 student from Nakulabye, the P7 from Namuwongo. Perhaps the benefit far outweighs the derivative threat.
ReplyDeleteNeutrality of the Internet in Uganda would be best pushed by UCC and NITA. However, I do not think these bodies really understands the benefits that come up with channelling traffic through an IXP. Someone needs to educate them about how IXPs works and how it would cut down cost for companies still crawling.
ReplyDeleteKyle
ReplyDeletegreat article. i totally agree with your point. when pipe providers are making deals with big corporates this does not look good for small innovative entrepreneurs. Exactly as you stated, people feels that it is good if it is wikimedia and bad if it facebook. But it all the same.
I also agree with one commenter (Godfrey) about the role of teh regulator. It is terrible that network providers are at the same time competing with mobile service providers and providing them services (hosting, billing, etc) this is totally unfair, and will stay till the two roles are separated. You might be interested in a post i wrote on this topic at http://www.webfoundation.org/2011/12/partnership-with-mobile-operators-in-the-mobile-services-domain/
That said, there is another point in this situation (free access to knowledge) that also deserve some thinking. I feel that there should be some minimal data access available for free to access essential social-oriented services. It is the case in some way for telephony service where in most countries without credit you can always call emergency numbers.
It should be the same for data and services that are public services. There should also be some basic plan that is affordable (according to UN it is affordable when it is below 5% of your monthly income, we are quite far).
So i vote for a free affordable internet access !
steph
Jonathan Zittrain's book The Future of the Internet has an interesting stance on net neutrality: giving you restricted access to the Web is better than no access at all. There is no loss of net neutrality until some service that was previously available is removed (eg, an ISP blocking skype in order to force users to use its premium voice/chat service).
ReplyDeleteWhy didn't anybody complain about TV's tiered system? It would certainly be criticized as a loss of broadcast neutrality, if it had been introduced as charging for bundles that were originally free. Another example from Zittrain again is video game consoles that plus on the net in order to play online games, but nothing else. Can they be blamed for blocking anything other than their service?
That doesn't restrict the fact that the behaviour of operators in that respect is quite unfair. Consider Amazon's Kindle: it allows Wikipedia access over 3G pretty much everywhere. But the rest of the net can only be access in some countries (eg US). I suspect Amazon would like to have the whole Web available to any kindle in as many countries as possible, but it's mobile operators who are blocking it.
They could perfectly open the gates to the rest of the internet, of course. And will probably lead to paid-for access to the rest, which is bad. My point is that it's not necessarily a net neutrality issue.